Aladdin and the Magic Lamp a personalised book with your child as the hero

Long ago, in a great city of the East, there lived a boy called Aladdin. He lived with his mother in a tiny house at the end of a dusty street, beside an empty lot where nothing grew. They were very poor, but Aladdin was quick and cheerful, and every day he threaded his way through the loud, bright market with empty pockets and an eye for everything: the silks and the spices, the copper pots and the baskets of figs.

One day a stranger in a dark cloak stopped him by the fountain. He had a sharp face and a voice like honey.

"You look like a clever boy," he said. "Would you like to earn a silver coin? There is a cave not far from here that nobody else will enter. Inside it is one small thing I want: an old lamp. Fetch it for me, and the coin is yours."

A whole silver coin! Aladdin said yes at once.

The stranger led him out beyond the city walls to a bare, rocky hillside. There he raised his arms and spoke a single strange word, and with a deep grinding sound a stone door opened in the rock. Warm golden light came up out of the dark.

"Go down," said the stranger. "Touch nothing on the way. Bring me the lamp."

Aladdin went down a long flight of steps into a cave beneath the market. And what a cave it was! There were trees made of jewels, with rubies and emeralds hanging like fruit. There were heaps of gold coins, and in one corner lay a rolled-up carpet with golden tassels. Aladdin touched nothing. At the very end of the cave, on a ledge, stood a dusty old lamp.

"This?" said Aladdin. "All this, for a dusty old lamp?" He picked it up, tucked the carpet under his arm as well, because it looked so soft, and climbed back up the steps.

"Hand me the lamp!" called the stranger from the top. "Quickly, boy, hand it up first!"

Something in his voice made Aladdin uneasy. "Help me out first," he said, "and then you can have it."

"The lamp first!" shouted the stranger, and when Aladdin still would not give it to him, he flew into a terrible rage. He spoke the strange word again, and the stone door swung shut overhead with a great boom. Aladdin was shut in, alone, in the dark.

For a long time he sat on the steps. At last, just for something to do, he began to rub it clean with his sleeve.

At once a curl of smoke rose from the spout. It grew and swirled and filled the cave, and out of it rose a genie, enormous and shimmering, with his arms folded and his head almost touching the roof.

"I am the genie of the lamp," he said in a voice like distant thunder. "You have called me, and you shall have three wishes. What is your command?"

Aladdin could barely speak. Then he said the plainest thing in the world. "I wish I was out of this cave and standing in my own street."

And in the blink of an eye he was standing outside his own front door, with the lamp in one hand and the carpet under his arm.

His mother could hardly believe the story. "A genie? In this old thing?" But she soon believed it, because that very evening Aladdin rubbed the lamp again and made his second wish.

"I wish for a home my mother can be proud of," he said, "with enough in it to share with the whole street."

The next morning the empty lot beside their house was gone. In its place stood a palace of white marble with golden domes, and inside it a feast was laid for every family in the street. Everybody ate until they could eat no more.

Now, news of the palace spread fast, and it reached the ears of a greedy merchant. He put two and two together and worked out exactly where Aladdin's good luck had come from.

The next day the merchant came down the street with a cart full of shiny new lamps. "New lamps for old!" he cried. "New lamps for old!"

Aladdin was out, and his mother, who thought it was a very good bargain, gave the merchant the dusty old lamp from the shelf and took a shiny new one in exchange. The merchant ran off with the old lamp under his cloak, laughing to himself.

When Aladdin came home and heard what had happened, he did not waste a moment. He unrolled the carpet with the golden tassels, sat down on it, and said, "Please, follow that merchant!" For he had already found out that this was no ordinary carpet. It rose up off the floor, swept out of the window and flew over the rooftops of the city like a bird.

They found the merchant far out on the road, sitting on a rock and rubbing the old lamp furiously. Nothing was happening, because the genie would not come out for a thief.

Down swooped the flying carpet. The merchant looked up, saw a boy flying through the air on a carpet, and nearly fell off his rock in fright.

"You swapped that lamp fairly with my mother," said Aladdin, "so I'll swap it back fairly with you. Your new lamp for my old one."

The merchant was so frightened of a boy who could fly that he handed over the old lamp at once. Aladdin gave him back his shiny new lamp, and the merchant set off down the road with his cart, taking all the shiny new lamps he could carry, and he never came back to that city again.

That night Aladdin sat on the roof of his palace with the lamp in his lap, and rubbed it one last time.

"You have one wish left," said the genie. "What is your command?"

Aladdin thought about the cave, and the dark, and how long the genie must have been shut up inside that dusty old lamp.

"How long have you been in there?" he asked.

"A thousand years," said the genie.

"Then I wish," said Aladdin, "that you were free."

The genie stared at him. Then he laughed, a huge, happy laugh that shook the stars, and he rose up into the night sky, free at last. And every year after that, on the same night, a shooting star would fly over Aladdin's palace, and Aladdin always waved to it.